Ex and Sale, Sheets, and a Pumpkin

Weaving and Spinning Guild Ex and Sale done for another year, and it was a great one. My only regret is that I completely missed getting photos for a few of my things before they were sold, so now I will have permanent blank spaces on those project pages on Ravelry :(

But I did bring home a really neat something, completely unexpectedly. On Saturday I was chatting with an older lady, also of Dutch extraction, about knitting, and the patterns from various countries, and dyeing, and we had a nice time. Sunday she showed up again at my booth and gave me a huge wooden knitting needle holder. Painted and carved, and likely Dutch; she said she'd enjoyed it for years, but was trying to cut down on the things she had, and she wanted it to go to someone who would appreciate it! I was just about bowled over.

The painting reminds me a bit of the folk art my Dutch grandmother used to paint. So special, and yet kind of sad that this lady had no one in her family who would want it, and it came to me, who she'd just met. It's a common issue, though; my mother has a lot of things - vintage clothes, quilts-in-progress - that came to her from someone she knew whose family would have tossed the things out if they inherited them.

The night before the show, I was ironing my tablecloth, aka a navy-blue bed sheet, and it occurred to me that, like vinegar, bedsheets must be one of those household items that have 101 uses. My coloured bedsheets have served as chair slipcovers, frost blankets for my plants, tablecloths for shows, a costume sari for Halloween, floor covering when I'm picking or carding wool...we used sheets for tents or to mimic a canopy bed as kids, Mom uses old ones for weaving rag rugs, and my living-room curtains are patterned sheeting we bought as a remnant. Very useful things.

It seems the next time I go to the parents', there will be another cat to get acquainted with. Mom said she wasn't looking for another cat, certainly not a male, and not an orange one, since her Abby is orange. And Halloween night, an orange male cat decided to adopt them. He apparently has a big round head too, so he has been given the obvious name, Pumpkin. The other cats have done the feline equivalent of shrug and go about their business, but the dog is getting a lot of exercise, constantly needing to look for That Cat and discourage it from staying. Pumpkin just sits and watches from a higher vantage point, but doesn't seem scared, (and the dog gets tired easily), so that should resolve itself pretty soon...